What I’m Thankful for in Cloud Native This Year: A Community That Keeps Building the Future

If you’ve been anywhere near the cloud-native world in 2025, you know the old proverb “May you live in interesting times” dramatically undersells just how wild this ride has been. We didn’t just get “interesting times,” folks — we got the full choose-your-own-adventure special edition, complete with plot twists, power surges, vendor drama, AI-native everything, and YAML-induced nightmares.

And through it all, you know who kept showing up?

The cloud-native community. The CNCF. The Linux Foundation. The contributors. The maintainers. The dreamers. The doers.

This ecosystem remains one of the strongest, most resilient and most deeply collaborative in all of tech.

So in the spirit of the season, here’s what I’m thankful for in cloud native this year — and yes, a few things I’m not thankful for. Because no movement grows without a little tough love.

Five Things I’m Truly Thankful For in Cloud Native This Year

1. The CNCF & Linux Foundation: Stewards of a Global Movement

Let’s start with the heart of it all.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation and the Linux Foundation continue to perform one of the hardest acts in modern tech:

Shepherding a massive, global, multi-vendor, multi-interest ecosystem without losing the soul of the community.

They:

• Maintain project neutrality
• Cultivate global collaboration
• Keep events large yet intimate
• Grow the contributor base
• Enable vendors and practitioners to coexist
• And preserve the open-source ethos that makes this space special

We don’t say it enough, so let me say it plainly:

I’m thankful for the CNCF and LF for giving cloud native a home, a heartbeat, and a long runway ahead.

2. Kubernetes Growing Up Without Growing Old

Kubernetes today is stable, boring, mature — and somehow still magical.

We’ve hit the rare sweet spot where:

• Innovation continues at the edges
• Core stability strengthens
• The ecosystem flourishes
• Enterprise adoption accelerates
• And the community still feels vibrant

Kubernetes didn’t “win” by becoming cool.

It “won” by becoming reliable.

And that’s something to be thankful for.

3. The Observability Renaissance — And the Rise of OpenTelemetry

This deserves its own spotlight because observability had a monster year.

Between the explosion of telemetry pipelines, the Chronosphere acquisition, new funding rounds for observability startups, and enterprises finally recognizing observability as the engine of modern reliability, 2025 marked a turning point.

But the real hero here?

OpenTelemetry. OTEL. The open standard that changed everything.

I’m thankful for:

• OTEL hitting true mainstream adoption
• Vendor-neutral instrumentation becoming the default
• Community-driven standards replacing proprietary agents
• Tracing, metrics, and logs finally speaking the same language
• The CNCF observability ecosystem pushing each other forward

Make no mistake:

OTEL is to observability what Kubernetes was to orchestration.

It unlocked innovation across vendors and empowered practitioners.

And the maintainers?

They deserve a parade. Preferably with flame graphs on the banners.

4. Open Source Collaboration at a Scale Most Industries Only Dream Of

In cloud native, collaboration isn’t a buzzword — it’s oxygen.

Just look at the roster of miracle projects:

• Envoy
• Prometheus
• Cilium
• Crossplane
• Linkerd
• Argo
• Fluentd
• Kyverno
• OPA
• Falco
• Containerd

Every one powered by humans who choose to collaborate instead of compete.

I’m thankful for that ethos more than ever.

5. Platform Engineering & IDPs Growing Up in the Cloud-Native Backyard

Platform engineering didn’t just arrive — it arrived with purpose.

This year, platform teams built IDPs that weren’t just pretty dashboards but real engines of:

• Developer velocity
• Governance-as-code
• Policy automation
• Secure-by-default patterns
• Infrastructure standardization

Cloud native gave platform engineering the primitives.

Platform engineering gave cloud native the scale.

For that synergy, I’m very thankful.

Three Things I’m Not Thankful For (But Still Hopeful About)

1. Complexity Rising Faster Than Tooling Can Tame It

If I had a dollar for every tool on the CNCF landscape…

Actually, no — that still wouldn’t cover hosting your observability bill.

Complexity remains the tax we all pay for innovation.

And the bill is getting steep.

I’m not thankful for:

• Overlapping tools
• Cognitive overload
• Glue engineering
• Integration fatigue
• And the growing risk that complexity itself becomes a form of technical debt

But I am hopeful — because this community solves hard problems.

2. Vendor Noise Turning the Signal-to-Noise Ratio Upside Down

KubeCon floors now feel like Times Square collided with a startup incubator.

Innovation is great.

Marketing megaphones? Not so much.

Practitioners need clarity, not shouting.

I’m not thankful for the noise — but again, hopeful that ecosystems self-correct.

3. Maintainer Burnout: The Quiet Crisis

Many of the most important cloud-native tools in the world depend on:

• A handful of overworked maintainers
• Nights and weekends
• Unpaid emotional labor
• And a deep sense of responsibility

It’s not sustainable.

I’m not thankful for the burnout — but I am thankful this community is finally discussing it out loud.

Shimmy’s Take: Gratitude, Hope & The Unstoppable Spirit of Cloud Native

As I look back on 2025, here’s what stands out:

• The cloud-native community remains one of the strongest in tech.
• The CNCF and Linux Foundation continue to shepherd the movement with wisdom and humility.
• Kubernetes matured beautifully.
• Observability and OTEL had their breakout year.
• Platform engineering brought coherence to the chaos.
• Open source collaboration continues to inspire.

Yes, we have work to do:

Complexity, burnout, vendor noise — all real issues.

But I’ve learned something in 13+ years covering this space:

Cloud native always finds a way forward.

Not because of the tech — but because of the people.

And that is what I am most thankful for.

Here’s to the builders.

Here’s to the maintainers.

Here’s to the dreamers and disruptors.

Here’s to the CNCF and LF.

Here’s to the practitioners who make cloud native real.

Onward.